


Slipping Through the Stream

by louciferish



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Time Travel, Venezia | Venice, World Travel, young adult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29758497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: Separated from her school tour group on a trip to Venice, Gemma winds up way more lost than she ever thought possible.
Kudos: 7





	Slipping Through the Stream

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Any Way The Wind Blows zine, a travel anthology

The crypt of San Marco reeks of marble and mildew. There are worse odors for a crypt to have, but that doesn’t mean Gemma has to appreciate it. If her grandmother were here, she’d be dousing the whole building in lemon Pine-Sol.

Gemma scowls at her phone, fat-fingering her passcode on purpose as the thing attempts to slowly restart. _Not sure why I’m even trying this again_ , she thinks. _It didn’t work the first two times_. But it’s basically a compulsion at this point. She _needs_ to be able to Google this place, to find out something worth knowing, or she’s going to expire from boredom. They’re not supposed to be using their phones in the church--her teacher was plenty clear about how to practice respect in these spaces--but Gemma’s not really interested in the religious stuff or the centuries-old dead guy mouldering down here. 

It’s an educational trip, right? All Gemma wants is to learn something that’s actually interesting.

Her phone chimes as it restarts, and the sound echoes off the ancient stone walls. Gemma raises her head, certain she’s been caught.

But the crypt is empty. There are no other students beneath the high arches, no clamoring voices, no tap of receding footsteps. Her tour group is gone.

“Great chaperoning, Ms. Reynolds,” Gemma mutters to the statue beside her, but the man’s carved face is unresponsive. Nothing answers her, not even an echo, and a chill crawls up between her shoulders, raising the hairs on her neck. She holds back a shiver and tries to push the feeling aside. She’d rather not even think the word ‘eerie’ while standing in the middle of a crypt. Best to just leave.

Her tour group can’t have gone far, so Gemma hurries to the stairs. If she gets lost and has to call home for help from _Italy_ , her brothers will never let her live it down. 

She takes the steps two at a time and bursts out into the grand Cathedral to -- nothing. 

Gemma stops in her tracks, staring. It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes since she wandered through here with her class, all of them craning their necks to stare at the overwhelming detail of the golden mosaics on the ceiling. When they’d descended into the crypts, the church itself had been packed with tourists, the air filled with babble in a wide variety of languages as people shook rain drops from their dark-colored, plasticky jackets. 

Now, it’s empty. Gemma’s group is nowhere to be found, and neither are the staff, the guards -- no one. No one but Gemma and the flat, immobile faces of unfamiliar saints staring down at her. 

“Ms. Reynolds? Vanessa? Carlos?” Gemma calls out to her classmates, and her voice reverberates off the grand domes and high stone arches, but no one answers. That’s not right. None of this is right, and Gemma can’t even begin to think of what might cause the cathedral to suddenly empty this way. It was still morning when they’d arrived in the Piazza; nothing should be shut down. Nerves roil her stomach as Gemma strides across the aisle to the green-tinted metal lattice doors that lead outside.

She seizes the cold iron, and it clangs and clatters, but doesn’t swing free-- locked. As her heart plunges into her gut, Gemma raises her eyes from the gate to the Piazza beyond. 

She expects, or at least hopes, to find a guard, tourists, a busy courtyard filled with laughing children and the frantic flapping of panicked pigeons. 

Instead, she sees only grass. 

Stepping back, Gemma squeezes her eyes shut, then blinks rapidly, trying to dismiss the empty Piazza from her sight like a stray eyelash. But no, the view hasn’t changed. Where before there had been paved stones, vendors, and a wide, bright courtyard filled with tourists, selfie sticks at the ready, there’s now an empty field. The bright green plain is broken only by a slim stream and a few columns of burgeoning fruit trees planted beyond it.

Gemma steps back again, bewildered. What is it people say in the movies? _Pinch me. I must be dreaming._ She didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, thanks to both jet lag and a full liter of orange Fanta. Her brothers like to pinch the inside of her upper arms sometimes to make her yelp. She finds the spot, braces herself for the sting, and twists her own flesh. 

It hurts enough she bites her lip, but the view outside the gate is unchanged.

“ _Gemma_?”

The call is faint, little more than a whisper, but Gemma spins around. “Vanessa!” The cathedral is still deserted, but she’s certain that was her best friend. “Vanessa, where are you guys?”

No answer.

She must be imagining things out the door. Her group probably moved on to the Doge’s Palace without her, that’s all. The tour guide had pointed out the connecting route to them earlier, in case someone got lost, so Gemma trots toward it now. She doesn’t look back over her shoulder to check the view of the Piazzo again.

The walkway, too, is deserted, but Gemma had expected that. It’s rare that tourists are allowed to use it -- “a special treat,” the guide had said with a wink. Gemma suspects the choice had more to do with the heavy grey clouds hovering on the horizon when they left the hotel than anyone willing to do special favors for a small art school group.

Soon enough, she emerges into the Palace itself. In the doorway, she pauses, breath catching. Mrs. Reynolds had said the Palace was _magnificent_ , but she says that about everything. She’d used the same word for the canals, and Gemma had found the reality to be green and cloudy, like her apartment’s pool when it filled with rain in the off-season. She’s still undecided on that whole gondola thing, worried she’d tip into the muck. 

But in the case of the Palace, her teacher wasn’t exaggerating. _Magnificent_ is absolutely the word. Every centimeter of the room around her is a work of art: frescos and sculptures stand side-by-side, each work set apart from the next by an ornate, golden carving, until the whole room is awash with color and refracted light. Even the ceiling is ornately decorated, and Gemma tilts her head back, staring open-mouthed until her neck twinges from the angle. When she looks down, her eyes fall, naturally, to the open window facing the Piazzo.

The orchard is gone now, replaced with a much more familiar stone and marble facade, and Gemma reaches toward the glass. Hand outstretched, she hesitates, frowning. It’s not the same. Something strikes her as off, and she steps closer, searching for it. 

There are people in the Piazzo, people in uniform. It’s not anything Gemma recognizes--blue jackets with a white X of straps dashed across the front. Some of the men are topping the look off with strange tall hats with a point or plume at the tip. Gemma scowls at the young soldiers as they chortle and elbow one another in ranks. Beyond them, she can see a small crowd beginning to gather. A few children in simple, old-fashioned clothes venture toward the men, only to be hauled back by a woman watching over them. 

_CLANG_! A thunderous sound echoes through the plaza, and even the soldiers jump. Gemma raises her eyes, then covers her mouth with her hand. 

It’s the lion. The bronze, winged lion that overlooks Venice lists from side to side atop its stone platform, wrapped in ropes as more uniformed men work away at its feet. _Clang_. The men rip at its foundations. _Crack_. It tilts to the side, threatening to fall.

Gemma looks away. Her heart is pounding, fist clenched at her side. Across the Piazzo, the people call out. Gemma doesn’t need to know the language to understand what they mean. _How could they? How could they tear apart the lion?_

She shakes her head, trying to focus again. “Not real,” she mutters to herself, but doesn’t bother pinching again. “Just a stupid daydream.”

In the gilded room, her words ring hollow.

Gemma pushes on, still chasing that brief moment when she heard her friend’s voice. Each chamber of the palace seems more decadent than the last. There are so many paintings and great works, she can hardly focus on one before being distracted by its neighbor, and all of this combined with rich tapestries, solemn statues, and gold, gold everywhere. It’s impossible to believe people had lived in this building, laughed and danced and made stupid mistakes all beneath these high, ornate ceilings.

And yet, dazzled as she is by the artwork, Gemma can’t resist looking to the windows. Through one, she witnesses Carnival, all the attendees in brilliant colors and elaborate costume, the masks clearly made by hand through various levels of skill and topped with curling, dyed feathers. The actual festival for this year took place months ago, but she has a feeling the one she’s looking on is much, much older than that.

Another portal shows her a Piazza literally trashed beyond belief--layers of food debris, empty aluminum cans, and plastic bottles cover almost every inch of ground, and more garbage bobs sadly in the canal, a gondola fit for only mice and roaches. A bleary-eyed blonde man shuffles past the window in ripped denim and a Pink Floyd t-shirt. He pauses and looks inside, and Gemma freezes, wondering if he sees her too. 

He sticks his finger up his nose.

Gemma moves on. Quickly.

As she walks, an echo seems to dog her footsteps, faintly clinking like coins being jostled against themselves in a purse. She pauses, and the sound stops. The rooms she’s passing through are plain now, at least compared to the other chambers, but still beautiful. From richly appointed public areas, she finds herself wandering between walls of touch-smoothed stone and aging brick.

At the end of a corridor, Gemma comes to a rough, rod iron-barred door. Beyond it, she can see slivers of light cutting through a stone passage. Hand on the door, she hesitates. This doesn’t look anything like the rest of the palace. Has she taken a wrong turn? 

_Clink. Clink._ The sound is back, though Gemma isn’t moving. It’s back, and it’s getting louder. It doesn’t sound like coins at all anymore. It’s heavier. Older. The metal scrapes and rattles where it drags along the ground. 

Her heart pounding, Gemma yanks open the iron door and rushes ahead. She doesn’t know where she’s going, only knows instinctively that she can’t be caught by the sound of chains. 

The passage ahead of her is narrow as a coffin, divided down the center by a solid, ancient brick wall. To her right, carved out of the white stone, are tiny windows, barely large enough to fit her head into. She squints, trying to make out anything she can beyond the iron bars.

A gondola glides through crystalline blue waters, passing beneath her feet. In the back, beneath a lace parasol, a woman in a long white dress tilts her face up toward Gemma’s perch. She covers her mouth with one gloved hand, then reaches over to tug at the sleeve of the man next to her. Gemma can’t see his face, obscured by the brim of his top hat, and the bars on the window press lines into her cheek as she leans closer to catch a glimpse. 

Behind her, the heavy iron door clangs shut. 

Gemma whirls and jogs for the other end of the passage. Her footsteps echo off the stone walls, but even over that, even over the harsh pant of her breaths, she can hear the drag and rattle of the chains still coming in her wake.

There’s another iron door ahead, and Gemma doesn’t hesitate before pushing this one wide. She spills out into a new stone room, more iron -- and collides head on with Jeremy Withers. 

“Oy, watch it!” Jeremy hollers, and Gemma jumps back. Her whole class turns to see what the racket is about. Even Ms. Reynolds is there, her customary frown pulling at her lips, forming lines that make her look much older than twenty-eight.

“ _There_ you are.” Before Gemma can even stutter an apology to scowling, foul Jeremy, Vanessa’s at her side, hand on her elbow, tugging Gemma away from him. 

She’s never been so relieved to see her awful classmates -- and Vanessa -- in her life. 

“Are you okay?” Vanessa asks, but before Gemma can answer she’s prattling on, shaking her head. “I told you, you need to watch where you’re going. If you’re always staring at your phone, you’re going to end up lost around here.”

Confused, Gemma glances down at the phone in her hand. The screen is bright against the cold darkness of the palace jail. An open page reads, _Secrets of Venice’s Bridge of Sighs, Explained_. 

“Well?” Vanessa prompts, and Gemma looks up at her. “Did you learn anything cool from all that extra research, at least?”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” She glances at her phone only briefly, turning it off before tucking it into her back pocket. 

Ms. Reynolds calls out -- it’s time to move along. They’re due for lunch. Gemma and Vanessa slip into the rest of the group and join the conversation, debating whether or not it’s rude for a group of tourists to eat McDonald’s while touring Italy. As they leave, Gemma glances back only briefly at the Doge’s Palace, feeling the years wound up in every curve and stone of the building and the city around it. 

She turns back to Vanessa. “I know we’re meant to be learning culture and stuff, but I could _kill_ for some greasy fries right now.”

“Same. Absolute same.”

The two of them end up back at the canals twenty minutes later, loitering on a smaller bridge that stretches across the greenish, murky water. The Bridge of Sighs stretches between the buildings ahead, much more appealing from the outside than in. They eat their greasy, flattened cheeseburgers side by side and toss their smallest french fries to the pigeons.


End file.
